


home in the heart of hell

by sweetdreamsaremadeoffish



Category: Chilling Adventures of Sabrina (TV 2018)
Genre: #justiceforeveryone, Angst, Canon is not here, Character Death, F/F, Fix-It, Fluff, I'm literally going through and fixing each episode, Pagansim, Prayer, Religion, Royalty, SO, Softness, This is a safe space for sapphic behavior, You're Welcome, a heck ton of stuff is going to go down here so, be prepared, but like CAOS style, can't do any worse than canon did, pretty much, so it's fine
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-27
Updated: 2020-02-10
Packaged: 2021-02-27 03:41:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,227
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22430497
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sweetdreamsaremadeoffish/pseuds/sweetdreamsaremadeoffish
Summary: And all shall fadeThe flowers of springThe world and all the sorrowAt the heart of everything
Relationships: Adam Masters/Mary Wardwell | Madam Satan | Lilith, Dr. Cerberus/Hilda Spellman, Zelda Spellman/Mary Wardwell | Madam Satan | Lilith, other background teen stuff ig
Comments: 10
Kudos: 65
Collections: Madam Spellman 2020 Challenge





	1. The Hellbound Heart

**Author's Note:**

> so i'm all kinds of emotional about part 3 and decided to, as they say, fix it episode by episode.
> 
> everything's already outlined but i'm always happy to hear y'all's requests and ideas :)
> 
> there will be plenty more to come, but i hope you enjoy this first round.

The morning is rife with omens.

She rises early, seeking a rare moment of quiet for espresso and her newspaper before the coven awakes. These blue hours out of sun and sight are precious few now, with the Spellman house lined in youth, always some teen crisis after another. Her home is not her own, and scraps of peace are not enough though they must be. Grounds of her coffee curl into a crescent moon at the bottom of her cup.

With Satan subdued in Hell and Lilith watching over him, the Church of Night lies all but dead in the battlefield of aftermath alongside everything Zelda thought she knew. Her niece is the daughter of the Devil, her parents’ god buried in part by her hand, her husband—loathe as she is to call him so—free, her infant step-children at his mercy. Her coven, or what remains of it, is huddled under her roof, under the wings she often doubts.

They’re all so young.

Her silence is quickly eclipsed, and by the time she’s made her way to bathe, they’ve already run out of hot water. Submerged in the frigid basin, heavy head slumped into the porcelain, Zelda lays frozen in an emptiness of faith.

Zelda’s life is slipping through her fingers, but she holds tight to the Spellman creed. Family comes first. So these orphans, afraid, poisoned, and alone, became part of her family. She stands tall with her mother’s dignity and her father’s pride, promising to uphold them elsewhere even as she stripped the Desecrated Church of the Dark Lord’s image the night Lilith descended into the Pit with young Nicholas Scratch as her toll.

Her people will not worship him. The beast in the dark with his tricks and his lies and his cruelty and his hatred. His thirst for blood, Spellman blood.

But there is a hollow space in her where devotion nested, and she would not wish it on anyone, least of all them she shelters, them who have lost so much, too much, already.

She listens to doors open and close, children thudding like stones down the stairs to Hilda’s warmth and breakfast. Hilda, whose there-ness has been a secret favorite of hers. Hilda is there day after day, dependable as dirt, and Zelda doesn’t think about what this mess would be without her.

Today, they will begin anew. Today, they will return to the Academy, to their studies. They will need the strength of knowledge to rebuild their home. And their hearts.

That, and she’d like to take a decent bath.

Mary’s alarm fails her. It’s late, unaccustomed to her routine, and she has to scramble about her still-strange home to make it to school in acceptable time.

The halls there seems longer, her office darker, but her classroom is the same. She has to be grateful for small miracles, though it’s no small blessing.

Her classroom has always been safe, safer than the world hanging outside, eavesdropping with burning ears as she and her students whisper ways it could be better. Mary dusts the shelves of books that stand sentry over the back of the class, ensures each item on her desk is in line, and dares to retrieve her lesson plan from the cabinet in her office.

Everything is just slightly out of place, as though rummaged and replaced just as she entered the room, just missing the culpable rogue. And not just in her office, Mary notes. Her whole life feels… askew. Months of her memory is missing, as is any explanation of its flight, there are bloodstains in the grout between the tiles on her bathroom floor, mirrors shattered as if from the inside, and a receipt for a very large order of pizza she’s certain she did not make.

She couldn’t have. Pineapple on pizza is the work of the Devil.

To her, at least. Adam disagrees, joking this divide between them puts their engagement in jeopardy every time they go out.

Adam. Another missing piece of the puzzle. In his last letter, which she’s taken to keeping on the little table beside her bed, he’d promised to be home for Valentine’s Day, that his work was nearly done, that they could finally set a date for their wedding and set down roots in Greendale.

Well, his roots. Hers have been firmly planted for centuries, as if Wardwells could exist nowhere else.

But he never returned, to her limited knowledge, and it’s been nearly two months since Valentine’s.

Nothing seemed to add up, and in the absence of certainty, her mind filled in the blanks. Nightmares, vicious and horrifying things, plague her every night. Dark, twisted creatures made of shadows coming to tear off her skin, setting her cottage aflame, slitting Adam’s throat, then her own with the knives in the kitchen. The visions are unrelenting, and she hardly sleeps for fear of their haunting visitations.

But she has classes to teach, lessons to give, young minds to mold, even as hers frays at its seams. Mary Wardwell is a proper, professional person, and her head must rule over her heart here, being the more stable of the two.

She squares her shoulders, snatches her plans off her desk, and returns to teaching.

Hilda’s hands shake on their way to set the telephone back in its cradle. The Council, inquiring after Father Blackwood, are coming to Greendale, and she needs to find Zelda. They tucked Methuselah away in the woods weeks ago. It’s as good a place as any, with plenty of mortals to cover the traces of him. Zelda had staunchly refused the Cain Pit.

“No one harasses my little sister but me,” she’d said later, whiskey in hand, and Hilda felt the sweetness buried there. They discussed the incident no further.

But now, surely now the Council would ask after him. And what could they tell them?

That their leader was murdered in an act of self-defense? Even if they believed her, that would hardly matter. A high member of the Witches Council had been slaughtered by a Spellman. After the Anti-Pope fiasco, she can’t expect them to be kind. Not that she would anyway.

Hilda follows her sister’s voice, low and bold as it is, to the library. Students are gathered round her, sitting on the floor and listening, enraptured, as Zelda reads from the ancient tome spread across her lap. They must have gotten distracted while cleaning up there. Zelda tends to have that effect on… well, everyone. Her sister is entrancing when she’s passionate about something. Entrancing and dangerous.

“Ahem,” she mumbles. “Pardon me, sister, but could I speak with you for a moment?”

Zelda arches an eyebrow at the interruption, but Hilda’s fear must be glistening in her eyes because she leaves her circle of worship at the sight of her and lets Hilda pull the High Priestess into her office.

“What is it, Hilda?” Sometimes there are instants when Zelda sounds more like herself, when the steel in her gives way to something softer, and her place in the sororal bond they share becomes more maternal than anything. Hilda loves getting to see her.

“You see, um, the Council called and-” Already Zelda’s closer, protective and proud. Hilda loves her for it. “They’ve asked after Father Blackwood.” Not what she expected, apparently, from the sharp double-take and quick recovery that pass across her face. “It’s his turn to, em, host them.”

Zelda lights a cigarette with a snap of her fingers, not even bothering with her golden holder, but when she speaks it’s smooth around the edges, just as Hilda needs it to be.

“Oh, is that all, sister? No matter then. We’ll host them.”

“We will?” Zelda fixes her with a glare, but there’s fondness in it.

“Who else?”

Lilith watches through the eyes of others. She lies in wait, lounging about the throne room.

 _Her_ throne room. Hell is hers now.

Even with the three kings like serpents outside her door, even with Sabrina and her pesky mortal pets intruding on her domain, it’s _hers_ , and Lucifer is defeated, debased, destroyed. Nicholas Scratch’s body is chained at her feet, and she delights in the ease with which she tortures him. Sometimes it is the boy who screams, but how can that be helped when every now and then she draws a hurt howl from Satan himself? How can she resist? She is a demon, after all.

And still, she is hollow. Revenge is none so sweet for her soul, and she feels a deep-worn emptiness where the satisfaction of conquering should be. She has everything she’s asked for, everything she’s earned, and yet. And yet.

_Praise Lilith, full of disgrace._

It’s like wine, filling her chest in place of breath, and the immediate euphoria is foreign.

 _Cursed are you amongst women and cursed is the fruit of thy womb, demons._ A tender whisper in her ear. _You fled the Garden, where the weak ones dwelled and did not live in shame._ Zelda Spellman. Zelda Spellman’s voice and Zelda Spellman’s faith and Zelda Spellman’s careful, muddied love. She can’t think, can’t control the hammering of her pulse or the tears that trek down her cheeks at the fullness in her heart. _Unholy Lilith, Mother of night, pray for us sinners now and at the witching hour of our death._

And she can see Zelda suddenly, standing in the center of the academy dormitory, candle in hand, hope and hesitance in equal measure. She reaches out, trembling, and when her fingers brush Zelda’s cheek, she sees more. A false Blackwood at her shoulder drawing up shards of pain from their hiding, worry and wishes, and Zelda must feel her there, opening green eyes and turning into the touch.

_Praise Lilith._

It’s over, leaving behind a warm echo, an irrevocable brand on her soul, and she needs to sit down.

“Did you hear that?” Minion stares dumbly, and the magic of their voices must be inside her head, otherwise he would surely weep too. “They’re praying.”

The rest comes with emboldened disbelief. “To me.”

Sabrina arrives righteous and indignant, and Lilith is eased to it. She knows no charity, but bargains are another matter entirely. She releases Nick to Sabrina’s clinging hold with a roll of her eyes and princess’ promise to properly coronate her.

They stand before the hordes of Hell and handful of mortals, hand in infernal hand, Sabrina ready to crown her worthy when Beezlebub objects, a barrage of insults clouding his call for the rule of a Morningstar, that throne belongs to this half-breed child. Lilith bares her teeth, raring to smite him where he stands and show him precisely what “Satan’s concubine” can do, but the girl soothes her with a placating hand on her shoulder.

“I don’t want to be your queen,” Sabrina says, a match raining sparks in a room full of oil to be lit. “Lilith knows your customs. She was my father’s right hand, and she is wise and strong. If she was selected by your Dark Lord before any of his kingdom existed, how can there be a better choice for its new ruler?”

Beezlebub spits on her shoes. “You cannot deny your destiny, girl. You are meant to rule by blood. If you will not obey tradition, we can easily arrange for an appropriate replacement.”

Sabrina looks to Lilith, the vote of confidence undercut by her naivete.

“Caliban,” Asmodeus rasps. The boy emerges from the shadows, and Lilith bites back laughter. They can’t truly mean to pit this clay child against her. “Prince Caliban is borne of Hell’s very soil. He is of our realm and high birth. We call for a challenge.”

Apparently they can.

“You’ll need six-hundred and sixty-six signatures from the highest born of Hell to justify a challenge, you know that.” And here they thought she would not know the very law she wrote all those millenia ago. She’d written her hands raw for Lucifer’s dictation. She remembered everything.

“Can’t we, I don’t know, compromise?” Sabrina whines, so mortal it practically bleeds from her.

The three kings tither between themselves, then raise their ugly heads once more. “Yes. We are prepared to compromise.”

“Great.” Sabrina grins, thinking she’s won.

“Lilith may remain upon the throne for the time it takes us to gather the necessary call to challenge. Meanwhile, she will teach the Morningstar to rule in her stead once her time comes, as is fit to a woman.” Asmodeus turns upon Lilith. “Make Sabrina Morningstar ready to usurp you, whore, and you may live another day.” He sneers, extending a rotting hand. “Do we have a deal?”

Sabrina huddles to her mortal friends, Nicholas Scratch held between them. Lilith thinks of the Garden and Adam and Eve and the Tree and the years she walked the earth alone and the first scar Lucifer sliced into her skin and how she took it as a blessing. She thinks of Mary Wardwell, waking from nightmares that belong in her own sleep. She thinks of Zelda, circled by her coven, calling out into the dark for a god she does not yet know is listening.

“We do.”


	2. Drag Me to Hell

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i don't know if it's any good, but have at it, my dears.

Walking down Greendale’s Main Street, Sabrina scuffs her sneakers into the sidewalk. The quaint, if shabby, little shops lining either side do little to bolster her to her task: Dragging a human _soul_ to Hell.

What would her father say if he could see her now?

Well, Edward Spellman would be appalled, she’s sure. But Lucifer? All the lines of her life are so blurred now, who’s to say who’s who. 

She pauses, catching sight of Robert Robertson under the day-dead strings of lights. She settles in across from him, her victim, and tries to remember the maneuvers Aunt Zelda taught her, sitting on the living room floor at home. More so, she tries to remember the stories Aunt Zee told her about her father. Their Saturday morning chess tournaments, running through the woods with scraped knees and running through the Academy’s halls later, hand in hand.

She pins Mr. Robertson in checkmate by accident. She would’ve liked to give him one last win.

But she takes his hand and leads him to the kerb, every step hesitant and hovering. The pair of old-fashioned automobiles before her made something sink in her stomach. This man’s life could hardly be so black and white. No, the grey of humanity is its beauty. That’s what her father had always believed. And in such a case, it is just to err on the side of mercy.

“This isn’t right,” she says, and she knows it, knows in her bones what she has to do. She is a Spellman. “Mr. Robertson, wait.”

He looks at her in utter confusion. He’s accepted his fate. Sabrina can’t. “Not that one.” She shakes her head at the black car. “Take the other one.”

“Are you sure?” He blinks at her, eyes innocent with age, and she’s reminded of something else her Aunt Zelda taught her. Something William Shakespeare wrote centuries about leaving this world as we enter it. Pure.

“Definitely.”

Mr. Robertson turns back at the last moment. “Aren’t you coming with me?”

“No,” she says quietly. “I don’t think I’d be welcomed where you’re headed.”

It’s true. What would heaven do with her? A reckless witch with all the forbidden craft she’s used in her short time alight with power, the daughter of their greatest enemy. There is no place for devils in paradise, and her true nature remains a mystery, even to herself. She doubts mercy would meet her there. But she wishes him safe travels and lets herself hope. Just a little.

Then Robert Robertson bursts into ashes with a flash of azure hellfire.

She jumps, in shock, in horror, and Lilith is beside her, iron hold on her arm.

“Damn you.”

“What the heaven, Lilith?!” she yells, staring at the place Mr. Robertson stood not a moment ago. Raging, she yanks her wrist from Lilith’s vice-like grip. “What did you do to him?!”

Lilith scoffs. “I didn’t do anything. You, though, _you_ failed the test.”

“What are you talking about? What test?” Sabrina barks, royal blood burning in her veins.

“Did you actually think I’d let you practice on a real human soul? ‘ _Robert Robert_ son’?” The demoness rolls her eyes. “Honestly, Sabrina.”

Sabrina pouts.

“Oh, for Hell’s sake, stop moping. If I’d given you a real soul for your first try, you’d be skinned and staked at the Kings’ hands already for releasing it,” Lilith tells her gruffly. “Now, are you ready to grow up and do your job?”

Sabrina crosses her arms. “That depends who I’m supposed to drag.”

“No, it-” Lilith groans, exasperated beyond relief. Then she clears her throat, smoothes her skirt and tone, and locks her gaze on her reluctant charge. “Fine. Die on your own terms. Maybe the death of a Morningstar will make them see reason,” she mutters, keeping loud enough for Sabrina to shiver. “The first soul you’ll drag to Hell is that of a Jimmy Platt.”

Past a shiver, Sabrina freezes.

“Did you just say ‘Jimmy Platt’?”

When she was young, her foul language and sharp tongue often got her a mouthful of soap. Now, scrubbing the blackboard ‘til her nails are raw, Zelda wishes there was such a simple cure.

Memory magic is tricky, and psychic purification can only do so much to rid the mind of shadows. Hilda’s forbidden her from playing too freely there, cautious and caring. Her sister knows too well how far Zelda would go to shed her layers of weakness.

Chalk and a harsh burn make her delicate skin itch.

The coven, the children, must be acting in pain. Hilda thinks so. Or she would if Zelda told her. She’s familiar with such ways to cope. She’s the nearest remnant of Blackwood’s reign of terror, hence the obvious target of their teasing taunts. It’s been some time since she was at this end of youthful cruelty, and she can’t remember if it was always so acutely inflicted.

It seems she hasn’t yet suffered enough at his hands.

She avoids those times, those thoughts. The twirling, the twisting, the _torture_ to his pleasing.

Lady Blackwood.

The title she chased so hungrily for so long churns something inside her now, deep and dark. She’s marooned within herself too often to be decent of a leader. Where is her bold bravery? Where is her strength, her control?

What is Zelda Spellman without all that?

She lays down her sponge and basin when the slates are once again black, once again clean, and bends to the pentagram pressed floor.

And she prays. She prays for all the things she’s lost. She prays for quiet mercies and gentle nights. She prays for a loving summer, a good harvest. She prays for something stronger than soap, stronger than blood to make her untainted. She prays for a steady roof over every head of her coven. She prays for safety. For her coven, for her family. She prays for herself. She prays to Lilith and prays to be heard.

She does not presume to be answered.

“Ms. Wardw- Lil- Whatever! Sabrina’s in trouble!”

A frantic Rosalind Walker accosts her when she arrives in Sabrina’s bedroom that evening, and a simple check-in becomes a rescue mission. This game of tidying up after Sabrina like some glorified infernal nanny has grown increasingly irksome, but she frees the girl anyhow, knowing full well how poorly it would pass on her to let the future princess die.

Lilith takes the child, with her cherubic cheeks and twin straw plaits, home.

The child—Lucy, she recalls later—clings to her. In terror? In love? She can’t say. Likely in necessity, as Lilith emphatically is _not_ comforting, soothing, or mothering as the little thing must be accustomed to.

Still, she’s sweet around Lilith’s waist, baffling and warm. _Foolish child_ , she thinks, erasing her memory with soft lips to her temple as the doorbell rings through the drab little suburban home Lucy’s psychic imprint led her to. _I was once a devourer of babes. If only you knew, you would shake in your woolen socks_.

The door swings open, and a desperate mother crushes a misplaced daughter into her arms. Lilith ponders briefly the relative weakness of a child’s skeleton and how such ferocity could kill one.

She disappears before said mother can question her mysterious savior and wonders, if only for an instant, what it must be like to hold a beloved one tight enough to kill.

And what it must be like to be held, to be loved to death.

Shouting and cheering all around her in the bleachers, Mary Wardwell is an island of silence and solitude. The pep rally is rowdy, her students rabble-rousing with school spirit she’d hoped would lift her own.

She’s tied a shawl about her shoulders despite the first warmths of spring shooting up from the earth. Her body still chills like it’s October.

Her shoes are heavy, bricks of leather keeping her grounded when all her mind desires is to drift off, up and away into the clouds. A drumbeat of chanting, girls waving pom-poms and ponytails, and Mary forces herself to focus on the immense gravity of teenagehood. Sallow, surgical lights beam down bright on the electric green field where broad-backed young boys, most of whom make Mary’s skin crawl, tackle each other. Looking into the lights is violent as looking into the sun, and she chews on the inside of her cheek.

They’re dancing, bouncing and bounding with fresh newness. They don’t feel the tired pull of the world yet, and Mary is woefully out of place. She’s loved every day steeped in her students’ full youth since she began teaching. There’s something so hopeful and emboldening in long hours spent amidst wild imagination and unencumbered believing, but she’s beginning to wonder if she has any business in it now.

Her teaching, her very _presence_ , feels unwieldy, fearful and unsure. She’s small again, without her mother’s church skirt to huddle and hide in. After all, what respite can one take from the self?

The metallic tang of blood in her teeth reminds her of her body. She’s nervously nibbled into her lips, like a rabbit does a hutch, until they’re paper thin and paper cuts. It’s a welcome bite, all things considered. Wounds in the mouth heal much faster than those in the mind, and at least she knows where this blood comes from, who it belongs in.

Fury and sorrow crash into one another over the Spellmans’ threshold, Zelda down from on high, Sabrina up from below, so alike and so very dangerous to one another. That rebellious streak in her big sister she’s seen like spilled ink since wearing bows in their hair and living off bedtime stories has stained Sabrina in much the same shape, and maybe Zelda’s self-loathing plays a supporting role in each easy riling. Not to say their wee roguish lamb doesn’t deserve the wrath she raises at times, but it’s been this way all too often lately, and Hilda attempts to quell their tides, an easy eddy of peace in between.

A damned dam of sorts and she drowns a chuckle at the thought. Cee will appreciate the joke later, but she knows her audience and knows better for now.

And then there’s Ambrose, shoving Faustus Blackwood—the little bitch himself—to the carpet and in search of tea, and Prudence, sweat soaked as she lifts twin babes, unscathed into Zelda’s eager arms. Zelda fawns over Judas and Leticia, banishing embroidery declaring the infant ‘Judith’ with a swift spell.

Sabrina is grounded, and doubly upon her suggestion they might use the traitorous man slumped on the rug as an alternate vessel for Lucifer. Lucifer, his god. Lucifer, who’s near freed himself from a fighting human host. Lucifer, who’d easily win over Faustus’ will, perhaps even receive devoted surrender. Lucifer, who is _not_ her father. Hilda won’t hear of it, and Zelda’s relieved enough by the twins’ return to apologize with sincerity. 

She ensures her hunters are well-fed, wounds and worries treated, and shepherds them up to a well-earned sleep. She does everything Ambrose will let her, short of tucking them in, and when they’ve settled, she deals with Blackwood.

Him and his horrid time egg.

Hilda chains him up in the far corner of the Academy’s dungeons, away from Satan, muttering every binding incantation she can think of and then a few more. Just to be safe. He’s limp in his bonds, and if she bloodies his nose, it’s no one’s business but hers.

Zelda’s asked she go no further, that he be made to answer for his crimes before the coven when the time is right. Until then, she wants him to rot, forgotten and forsaken as the Dark Lord.

It’s really quite absurd, Hilda thinks, sealing the dank chambers behind her. They’ve done it. They’ve truly won, haven’t they? Despite all Sabrina’s headstrong meddling and all they’ve lost, they’ve won. Their two greatest enemies are finally out from underfoot, the instability of uncertainty already fading from their High Priestess’ eyes.

Hilda wishes she’d hit him harder.

And the Spellmans have her loveliest, fluffiest omelettes for breakfast the next morning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> don't worry, hildie knows what she's doing.
> 
> let me know if you disagree in les comments. or really anything? admittedly it doesn't start to really pick up until chapter 4, but i digress.
> 
> also, i love y'all. <3

**Author's Note:**

> okay but would you guys be mad if i made this kind of a musical? (also i'm looking for a different title, so if anyone has any thoughts about that hmu.)
> 
>  **Please** let me know what you thought and what you want going forward in the comments and know that I love you!
> 
> <3, Ruby


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